Search Results: "ag"

23 May 2015

DebConf team: Second Call for Proposals and Approved Talks for DebConf15 (Posted by DebConf Content Team)

DebConf15 will be held in Heidelberg, Germany from the 15th to the 22nd of August, 2015. The clock is ticking and our annual conference is approaching. There are less than three months to go, and the Call for Proposals period closes in only a few weeks. This year, we are encouraging people to submit half-length 20-minute events, to allow attendees to have a broader view of the many things that go on in the project in the limited amount of time that we have. To make sure that your proposal is part of the official DebConf schedule you should submit it before June 15th. If you have already sent your proposal, please log in to summit and make sure to improve your description and title. This will help us fit the talks into tracks, and devise a cohesive schedule. For more details on how to submit a proposal see: http://debconf15.debconf.org/proposals.xhtml. Approved Talks We have processed the proposals submitted up to now, and we are proud to announce the first batch of approved talks. Some of them: If you have already submitted your event and haven t heard from us yet, don t panic! We will contact you shortly. We would really like to hear about new ideas, teams and projects related to Debian, so do not hesitate to submit yours. See you in Heidelberg,
DebConf Team

Francois Marier: Usual Debian Server Setup

I manage a few servers for myself, friends and family as well as for the Libravatar project. Here is how I customize recent releases of Debian on those servers.

Hardware tests 
apt-get install memtest86+ smartmontools e2fsprogs
Prior to spending any time configuring a new physical server, I like to ensure that the hardware is fine. To check memory, I boot into memtest86+ from the grub menu and let it run overnight. Then I check the hard drives using: 
smartctl -t long /dev/sdX
badblocks -swo badblocks.out /dev/sdX

Configuration 
apt-get install etckeepr git sudo vim
To keep track of the configuration changes I make in /etc/, I use etckeeper to keep that directory in a git repository and make the following changes to the default /etc/etckeeper/etckeeper.conf:
  • turn off daily auto-commits
  • turn off auto-commits before package installs
To get more control over the various packages I install, I change the default debconf level to medium: 
dpkg-reconfigure debconf
Since I use vim for all of my configuration file editing, I make it the default editor: 
update-alternatives --config editor

ssh 
apt-get install openssh-server mosh fail2ban
Since most of my servers are set to UTC time, I like to use my local timezone when sshing into them. Looking at file timestamps is much less confusing that way. I also ensure that the locale I use is available on the server by adding it the list of generated locales: 
dpkg-reconfigure locales
Other than that, I harden the ssh configuration and end up with the following settings in /etc/ssh/sshd_config (jessie): 
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key
KexAlgorithms curve25519-sha256@libssh.org,ecdh-sha2-nistp521,ecdh-sha2-nistp384,ecdh-sha2-nistp256,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256
Ciphers chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com,aes256-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes128-ctr
MACs hmac-sha2-512-etm@openssh.com,hmac-sha2-256-etm@openssh.com,umac-128-etm@openssh.com,hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha2-256,umac-128@openssh.com
UsePrivilegeSeparation sandbox
AuthenticationMethods publickey
PasswordAuthentication no
PermitRootLogin no
AcceptEnv LANG LC_* TZ
LogLevel VERBOSE
AllowGroups sshuser
or the following for wheezy servers: 
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key
KexAlgorithms ecdh-sha2-nistp521,ecdh-sha2-nistp384,ecdh-sha2-nistp256,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256
Ciphers aes256-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes128-ctr
MACs hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha2-256
On those servers where I need duplicity/paramiko to work, I also add the following: 
KexAlgorithms ...,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1
MACs ...,hmac-sha1
Then I remove the "Accepted" filter in /etc/logcheck/ignore.d.server/ssh (first line) to get a notification whenever anybody successfully logs into my server. I also create a new group and add the users that need ssh access to it: 
addgroup sshuser
adduser francois sshuser
and add a timeout for root sessions by putting this in /root/.bash_profile: 
TMOUT=600

Security checks 
apt-get install logcheck logcheck-database fcheck tiger debsums corekeeper
apt-get remove john john-data rpcbind tripwire
Logcheck is the main tool I use to keep an eye on log files, which is why I add a few additional log files to the default list in /etc/logcheck/logcheck.logfiles: 
/var/log/apache2/error.log
/var/log/mail.err
/var/log/mail.warn
/var/log/mail.info
/var/log/fail2ban.log
while ensuring that the apache logfiles are readable by logcheck: 
chmod a+rx /var/log/apache2
chmod a+r /var/log/apache2/*
and fixing the log rotation configuration by adding the following to /etc/logrotate.d/apache2: 
create 644 root adm
I also modify the main logcheck configuration file (/etc/logcheck/logcheck.conf): 
INTRO=0
FQDN=0
Other than that, I enable daily checks in /etc/default/debsums and customize a few tiger settings in /etc/tiger/tigerrc: 
Tiger_Check_RUNPROC=Y
Tiger_Check_DELETED=Y
Tiger_Check_APACHE=Y
Tiger_FSScan_WDIR=Y
Tiger_SSH_Protocol='2'
Tiger_Passwd_Hashes='sha512'
Tiger_Running_Procs='rsyslogd cron atd /usr/sbin/apache2 postgres'
Tiger_Listening_ValidProcs='sshd mosh-server ntpd'

General hardening 
apt-get install harden-clients harden-environment harden-servers apparmor apparmor-profiles apparmor-profiles-extra
While the harden packages are configuration-free, AppArmor must be manually enabled: 
perl -pi -e 's,GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="(.*)"$,GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="$1 apparmor=1 security=apparmor",' /etc/default/grub
update-grub

Entropy and timekeeping 
apt-get install haveged rng-tools ntp
To keep the system clock accurate and increase the amount of entropy available to the server, I install the above packages and add the tpm_rng module to /etc/modules.

Preventing mistakes 
apt-get install molly-guard safe-rm sl
The above packages are all about catching mistakes (such as accidental deletions). However, in order to extend the molly-guard protection to mosh sessions, one needs to manually apply a patch.

Package updates 
apt-get install apticron unattended-upgrades deborphan debfoster apt-listchanges update-notifier-common aptitude popularity-contest
These tools help me keep packages up to date and remove unnecessary or obsolete packages from servers. On Rackspace servers, a small configuration change is needed to automatically update the monitoring tools. In addition to this, I use the update-notifier-common package along with the following cronjob in /etc/cron.daily/reboot-required: 
#!/bin/sh
cat /var/run/reboot-required 2> /dev/null   true
to send me a notification whenever a kernel update requires a reboot to take effect.

Handy utilities 
apt-get install renameutils atool iotop sysstat lsof mtr-tiny
Most of these tools are configure-free, except for sysstat, which requires enabling data collection in /etc/default/sysstat to be useful.

Apache configuration 
apt-get install apache2-mpm-event
While configuring apache is often specific to each server and the services that will be running on it, there are a few common changes I make. I enable these in /etc/apache2/conf.d/security: 
<Directory />
    AllowOverride None
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
</Directory>
ServerTokens Prod
ServerSignature Off
and remove cgi-bin directives from /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default. I also create a new /etc/apache2/conf.d/servername which contains: 
ServerName machine_hostname

Mail 
apt-get install postfix
Configuring mail properly is tricky but the following has worked for me. In /etc/hostname, put the bare hostname (no domain), but in /etc/mailname put the fully qualified hostname. Change the following in /etc/postfix/main.cf: 
inet_interfaces = loopback-only
myhostname = (fully qualified hostname)
smtp_tls_security_level = may
smtp_tls_protocols = !SSLv2, !SSLv3
Set the following aliases in /etc/aliases:
  • set francois as the destination of root emails
  • set an external email address for francois
  • set root as the destination for www-data emails
before running newaliases to update the aliases database. Create a new cronjob (/etc/cron.hourly/checkmail): 
#!/bin/sh
ls /var/mail
to ensure that email doesn't accumulate unmonitored on this box. Finally, set reverse DNS for the server's IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and then test the whole setup using mail root.

Network tuning To reduce the server's contribution to bufferbloat I change the default kernel queueing discipline (jessie or later) by putting the following in /etc/sysctl.conf: 
net.core.default_qdisc=fq_codel

22 May 2015

Michal &#268;iha&#345;: Weblate 2.3

Weblate 2.3 has been released today. It comes with better features for project owners, better file formats support and more configuration options for users. Full list of changes for 2.3: You can find more information about Weblate on http://weblate.org, the code is hosted on Github. If you are curious how it looks, you can try it out on demo server. You can login there with demo account using demo password or register your own user. Weblate is also being used https://hosted.weblate.org/ as official translating service for phpMyAdmin, Gammu, Weblate itself and other projects. If you are free software project which would like to use Weblate, I'm happy to help you with set up or even host Weblate for you. Further development of Weblate would not be possible without people providing donations, thanks to everybody who have helped so far! PS: The roadmap for next release is just being prepared, you can influence this by expressing support for individual issues either by comments or by providing bounty for them.

Filed under: English phpMyAdmin SUSE Weblate 0 comments

21 May 2015

Dirk Eddelbuettel: BH release 1.58.0-1

A new released of BH is now on CRAN. BH provides a large part of the Boost C++ libraries as a set of template headers for use by R and Rcpp. This release both upgrades the version of Boost to the current release, and adds a new library: Boost MultiPrecision . A brief summary of changes from the NEWS file is below.
Changes in version 1.58.0-1 (2015-05-21)
  • Upgraded to Boost 1.58 installed directly from upstream source
  • Added Boost MultiPrecision as requested in GH ticket #12 based on rcpp-devel request by Jordi Molins Coronado
Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for the most recent release. Comments and suggestions are welcome via the mailing list or the issue tracker at the GitHubGitHub repo.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

Yves-Alexis Perez: Followup on Debian grsec kernels for Jessie

So, following the previous post, I've indeed updated the way I'm making my grsec kernels. I wanted to upgrade my server to Jessie, and didn't want to keep the 3.2 kernel indefinitely, so I had to update to at least 3.14, and find something to make my life (and maybe some others) easier. In the end, like planned, I've switched to the make deb-pkg way, using some scripts here and there to simplify stuff. The scripts and configs can be found in my debian-grsec-config repository. The repository layout is pretty much self-explaining: The bin/ folder contains two scripts: The configs/ folder contains the various configuration bits: I'm currently building amd64 kernels for Jessie and i386 kernels will follow soon, using config-3.14 + hardening + grsec. I'm hosting them on my apt repository. You're obviously free to use them, but considering how easy it is to rebuild a kernel, you might want to use a personal configuration (instead of mine) and rebuild the kernel yourself, so you don't have to trust my binary packages. Here's a very quick howto (adapt it to your needs): 
mkdir linux-grsec && cd linux-grsec
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git
git clone git://anonscm.debian.org/users/corsac/grsec/debian-grsec-config.git
mkdir build
cd linux-stable
../debian-grsec-config/bin/get-grsec.sh stable2 # for 3.14 branch
../debian-grsec-config/bin/kconfig.py ../build/.config ../debian-grsec-config/configs/config-3.14-2-amd64 ../debian-grsec-config/configs/hardening ../debian-grsec-config/configs/grsec
make KBUILD_OUTPUT=../build -j4 oldconfig
make KBUILD_OUTPUT=../build -j4 deb-pkg
Then you can use the generated Debian binary packages. If you use the Debian config, it'll need a lot of disk space for compilation and generate a huge linux-image debug package, so you might want to unset CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO locally if you're not interested. Right now only the deb files are generated but I've submitted a patch to have a .changes file which can be then used to manipulate them more easily (for example for uploading them a local Debian repository). Note that, obviously, this is not targeted for inclusion to the official Debian archive. This is still not possible for various reasons explained here and there, and I still don't have a solution for that. I hope this (either the scripts and config or the generated binary packages) can be useful. Don't hesitate to drop me a mail if needed.

Michal &#268;iha&#345;: Translating Sphinx documentation

Few days ago, I've started writing Odorik module to manipulate with API of one Czech mobile network operator. As usual, the code comes with documentation written in English. Given that vast majority of users are Czech, it sounds useful to have in Czech language as well. The documentation itself is written in Sphinx and built using Read the Docs. Using those to translate the documentation is quite easy. First step is to add necessary configuration to the Sphinx project as described in their Internationalization Quick Guide. It's matter of few configuration directives and invoking of sphinx-intl and the result can be like this commit. Once the code in repository is ready, you can start building translated documentation on the Read the docs. There is nice guide for that as well. All you need to do is to create another project, set it's language and link it from master project as translation. The last step is to find some translators to actually translate the document. For me the obvious choice was using Weblate, so the translation is now on Hosted Weblate. The mass import of several po files can be done by import_project management command. And thanks to all these you can now read Czech documentation for python Odorik module.

Filed under: Coding English Odorik Weblate 0 comments

Dirk Eddelbuettel: RInside 0.2.13

A new release 0.2.13 of RInside is now on CRAN. RInside provides a set of convenience classes which facilitate embedding of R inside of C++ applications and programs, using the classes and functions provided by Rcpp. This release works around a bug in R 3.2.0, and addressed in R 3.2.0-patched. The NEWS extract below has more details.
Changes in RInside version 0.2.13 (2015-05-20)
  • Added workaround for a bug in R 3.2.0: by including the file RInterface.h only once we do not getting linker errors due to multiple definitions of R_running_as_main_program (which is now addressed in R-patched as well).
  • Small improvements to the Travis CI script.
CRANberries also provides a short report with changes from the previous release. More information is on the RInside page. Questions, comments etc should go to the rcpp-devel mailing list off the Rcpp R-Forge page.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

20 May 2015

Hideki Yamane: What is the most valuable challenge for Debian in this Stretch cycle?



  • restructuring website as 21st century style and drop deprecated info
  • automate test integration to infrastructure: piuparts & ci
  • more test for packages: adopt autopkgtest
  • "go/no-go vote" for migration to next release candidate (e.g. bohdi in Fedora)
  • more comfortable collab-development (see GitHub's pull request style, not mail-centric)
  • other
Your opinion?

Rhonda D'Vine: Berge

I wrote well over one year ago about Earthlings. It really did have some impact on my life. Nowadays I try to avoid animal products where possible, especially for my food. And in the context of vegan information that I tracked I stumbled upon a great band from Germany: Berge. They recently started a deal with their record label which says that if they receive one million clicks within the next two weeks on their song 10.000 Tr nen their record label is going to donate 10.000,- euros to a German animal rights organization. Reason enough for me to share this band with you! :)
(For those who are puzzled by the original upload date of the video: Don't let yourself get confused, the call for it is from this monday) Like always, enjoy!

/music permanent link Comments: 3 Flattr this

Norbert Preining: Shishiodoshi or Us and They On the perceived exclusivity of Japanese

The other day I received from my Japanese teacher an interesting article by Yamazaki Masakazu comparing garden styles, and in particular the attitude towards and presentation of water in Japanese and European gardens (page 1, page 2). The author s list of achievements is long, various professorships, dramatist, literature critique, recognized as Person of Cultural Merit, just to name a view. I was looking forward to an interesting and high quality article! The article itself introduces the reader to Shishiodoshi, one of the standard ingredients of a Japanese garden: It is a device where water drips into a bamboo tube that is also a seesaw. At some point the water in the bamboo tube makes the seesaw switch over and the water pours out, after which the seesaw returns to the original position and a new cycle begins. Shishiodoshi The author describes his feelings and thoughts about the shishiodoshi, in particular connects human life (stress and relieve, cycles), the flow of time, and some other concepts with the shishiodoshi. Up to here it is a wonderful article providing interesting insights into the way the author thinks. Unfortunately, then the author tries to underline his ideas by comparing the Japanese shishiodoshi with European style water fountains, describing the former with all favorable properties and full of deep meaning, while the latter is qualified as beautiful and nice, but bare of any deeper meaning. I don t go into details that the whole comparison is anyway a bad one, as he is comparing Baroque style fountains, a very limited period, and furthermore ignores the fact that water fountains are not genuinely European (isn t there one in the Kenrokuen, one of the three most famous gardens in Japan!?), nor does he consider any other water-installation that might be available. What really destroys the in principle very nice article is the tone: The general tone of the article then can be summarized into: The shishiodoshi is rich on meaning, connects to the life of humans, instigates philosophical reflections, represents nature, the flow of time etc. The water fountain is beautiful and gorgeous, but that is all. I don t think that this separation, or this negative undertone, was created on purpose by the author. A person of his stature is supposedly above this level of primitive comparison. I believe that it is nothing else but a consequence of upbringing and the general attitude that permeates the whole society with this feeling of separateness. Us and They Repeatedly providing sentences like Japanese people and Western people have different tastes.. ( ). About 10 times in this short article expressions like Japanese and Westerner appear, leaving the reader with a bitter taste of an author that considers first the Japanese a people (what about Ainu, Ryukyu, etc?), and second that the Japanese are exclusive in the sense that they are set apart from the rest of the world in their way of thinking, living, being. What puzzles me is that this is not only a singular opinion, but a very general straight in the Japanese media, TV, radio, newspaper, books. Everyone considers Japan and Japanese as something that is fundamentally and profoundly different from everyone else in the world. There is We the Japanese (and that doesn t mean nationality of passport, but blood line!), and there are They the Rest or, as the way of writing and and description on many occasion suggestions, They the Barbarians . A short anecdote will underly this: One of the favorite TV talk show / pseudo-documentary style is about Japanese living abroad. That day a lady married in Paris was interviewed. What followed was a guided tour through Paris showing: Dirt in the gutter, street cleaning cars, waste disposal places. Yes, that was all. Just about the dirt . Of course, at length the (unfortunately only apparent) cleanliness of Japanese cities and neighborhoods are mentioned and shown to remind everyone how wonderful Japan is and how dirty the Barbarians. I don t want to say that I consider Japan more dirty than most other countries just the visible part is clean, the moment you step a bit aside and around the corner, there are the worst trash just thrown away without consideration. Anyway. To return to the topic of Us and They I consider us all humans, first and foremost, and nationality, birthplace, and all that are just by chance. I do NOT reject cultural differences, they are here, of course. But cultural differences are one thing, separating one self and one s perceived people from the rest of the world is another. Conclusion I repeat, I don t think that the author had any ill intentions, but it would have been nicer if the article wouldn t make such a stark distinction. He could have written about Shishiodoshi and water fountains without using the Us They categorization. He could have compared other water installations, could have discussed the long tradition of small ponds in European gardens, just to name a few things. But the author choose to highlight differences instead of commonalities. It is the Us against Them feeling that often makes life in Japan for a foreigner difficult. Japanese are not special, Austrians, too, are not special, nor are Americans, Russians, Tibetans, or any other nationality. No nationality is special, we are all humans. Maybe at some point this will arrive also in the Japanese society and thinking.
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19 May 2015

Gunnar Wolf: Feeling somewhat special

Today I feel more special than I have ever felt. Or... Well, or something like that. Thing is, there is no clear adjective for this But I successfully finished my Specialization degree! Yes, believe it or not, today I can formally say I am Specialist in Informatic Security and Information Technologies (Especialista en Seguridad Inform tica y Tecnolog as de la Informaci n), as awarded by the Higher School of Electric and Mechanic Engineering (Escuela Superior de Ingenier a Mec nica y El ctrica) of the National Polytechnical Institute (Instituto Polit cnico Nacional). In Mexico and most Latin American countries, degrees are usually incorporated to your name as if they were a nobiliary title. Thus, when graduating from Engineering studies (pre-graduate universitary level), I became "Ingeniero Gunnar Wolf". People graduating from further postgraduate programs get to introduce themselves as "Maestro Foobar Baz" or "Doctor Quux Noox". And yes, a Specialization is a small posgraduate program (I often say, the smallest possible posgraduate). And as a Specialist... What can I brag about? Can say I am Specially Gunnar Wolf? Or Special Gunnar Wolf? Nope. The honorific title for a Specialization is a pointer to null, and when casted into a char* it might corrupt your honor-recognizing function. So I'm still Ingeniero Gunnar Wolf, for information security reasons. So that's the reason I am now enrolled in the Masters program. I hope to write an addenda to this message soonish (where soonish 18 months) saying I'm finally a Maestro. As a sidenote, many people asked me: Why did I take on the specialization, which is a degree too small for most kinds of real work recognition? Because it's been around twenty years since I last attended a long-term scholar program as a student. And my dish is quite full with activities and responsabilities. I decided to take a short program, designed for 12 months (I graduated in 16, minus two months that the university was on strike... Quite good, I'd say ;-) ) to see how I fared on it, and only later jumping on the full version. Because, yes, to advance my career at the university, I finally recognized and understood that I do need postgraduate studies. Oh, and what kind of work did I do for this? Besides the classes I took, I wrote a thesis on a model for evaluating covert channels for establishing secure communications.

Thorsten Alteholz: alpine and UTF-8 and Debian lists

This is a note for my future self: When writing an email with only charset=US-ASCII , alpine creates an email with:

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII

and everything is fine. In case of UTF-8 characters inside the text, alpine creates something like:

Content-Type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY="705298698-1667814148-1432049085=:28313"

and the only available part contains:

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT
 Google tells me that the reason for this is:
Alpine uses a single part MULTIPART/MIXED to apply a protection wrapper around QUOTED-PRINTABLE and BASE64 content to prevent it from being corrupted by various mail delivery systems that append little (typically advertising) things at the end of the message.
Ok, this behavior might come from bad experiences and it seems to work most of the time. Unfortunately if one sends a signed email to a Debian list that checks whether the signature is valid (like for example debian-lts-announce), such an email will be rejected with:
Failed to understand the email or find a signature: UDFormatError:
Cannot handle multipart messages not of type multipart/signed
*sigh*

Simon Josefsson: Scrypt in IETF

Colin Percival and I have worked on an internet-draft on scrypt for some time. I realize now that the -00 draft was published over two years ago, turning this effort today somewhat into archeology rather than rocket science. Still, having a published RFC that is easy to refer to from other Internet protocols will hopefully help to establish the point that PBKDF2 alone no longer provides state-of-the-art protection for password hashing. I have written about password hashing before where I give a quick introduction to the basic concepts in the context of the well-known PBKDF2 algorithm. The novelty in scrypt is that it is designed to combat brute force and hardware accelerated attacks on hashed password databases. Briefly, scrypt expands the password and salt (using PBKDF2 as a component) and then uses that to create a large array (typically tens or hundreds of megabytes) using the Salsa20 core hash function and then de-references that large array in a random and sequential pattern. There are three parameters to the scrypt function: a CPU/Memory cost parameter N (varies, typical values are 16384 or 1048576), a blocksize parameter r (typically 8), and a parallelization parameter p (typically a low number like 1 or 16). The process is described in the draft, and there are further discussions in Colin s original scrypt paper. The document has been stable for some time, and we are now asking for it to be published. Thus now is good time to provide us with feedback on the document. The live document on gitlab is available if you want to send us a patch.

Ritesh Raj Sarraf: Lenovo Yoga 2 13 with Debian

I recently acquired a Lenovo Yoga 2 13. While, at the time, the Yoga 3 was available, I decided to go for Yoga 2 13. The Yoga 3 comes with the newer Core M Broadwell family, which, in my opinion, doesn't really bring any astounding benefits. The Yoga 2 13 comes in mulitple variants worldwide. Infact these hardware variations have different effets when run under Linux. My varaint of Yoga 2 13 is: 
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4510U CPU @ 2.00GHz
RAM: 8 GiB - Occupying 2 slots
Memory Controller Information
        Supported Interleave: One-way Interleave
        Current Interleave: One-way Interleave
        Maximum Memory Module Size: 8192 MB
        Maximum Total Memory Size: 16384 MB
       
Handle 0x0006, DMI type 6, 12 bytes
Handle 0x0007, DMI type 6, 12 bytes
The usual PCI devices:
rrs@learner:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT DRAM Controller (rev 0b)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0b)
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT HD Audio Controller (rev 0b)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series USB xHCI HC (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series HECI #0 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series HD Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev e4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series USB EHCI #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 8 Series SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
17:37          
And the storage devices
Device Model:     WDC WD5000M22K-24Z1LT0-SSHD-16GB
Device Model:     KINGSTON SM2280S3120G
Storage

The drive runs into serious performance problems when its SSHD's NCQ (mis)feature is under use in Linux <= 4.0. 

[28974.232550] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133
[28974.232565] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: port does not support device sleep
[28983.680955] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x7fffffff SErr 0x400100 action 0x6 frozen
[28983.681000] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error
[28983.681027] ata1: SError:   UnrecovData Handshk  
[28983.681052] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[28983.681082] ata1.00: cmd 61/40:00:b8:84:88/05:00:0a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 688128 out
                        res 40/00:3c:78:a9:88/00:00:0a:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
[28983.681152] ata1.00: status:   DRDY  
[28983.681171] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[28983.681202] ata1.00: cmd 61/40:08:f8:89:88/05:00:0a:00:00/40 tag 1 ncq 688128 out
                        res 40/00:3c:78:a9:88/00:00:0a:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
[28983.681271] ata1.00: status:   DRDY  
[28983.681289] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[28983.681316] ata1.00: cmd 61/40:10:38:8f:88/05:00:0a:00:00/40 tag 2 ncq 688128 out
                        res 40/00:3c:78:a9:88/00:00:0a:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
[28983.681387] ata1.00: status:   DRDY  
[28983.681407] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[28983.681435] ata1.00: cmd 61/40:18:78:94:88/05:00:0a:00:00/40 tag 3 ncq 688128 out
                        res 40/00:3c:78:a9:88/00:00:0a:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
[28983.697642] ata1.00: status:   DRDY  
[28983.697643] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[28983.697646] ata1.00: cmd 61/40:c8:38:65:88/05:00:0a:00:00/40 tag 25 ncq 688128 out
                        res 40/00:3c:78:a9:88/00:00:0a:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
[28983.697647] ata1.00: status:   DRDY  
[28983.697648] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[28983.697651] ata1.00: cmd 61/40:d0:78:6a:88/05:00:0a:00:00/40 tag 26 ncq 688128 out
                        res 40/00:3c:78:a9:88/00:00:0a:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
[28983.697651] ata1.00: status:   DRDY  
[28983.697652] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[28983.697656] ata1.00: cmd 61/40:d8:b8:6f:88/05:00:0a:00:00/40 tag 27 ncq 688128 out
                        res 40/00:3c:78:a9:88/00:00:0a:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
[28983.697657] ata1.00: status:   DRDY  
[28983.697658] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[28983.697661] ata1.00: cmd 61/40:e0:f8:74:88/05:00:0a:00:00/40 tag 28 ncq 688128 out
                        res 40/00:3c:78:a9:88/00:00:0a:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
[28983.697662] ata1.00: status:   DRDY  
[28983.697663] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[28983.697666] ata1.00: cmd 61/40:e8:38:7a:88/05:00:0a:00:00/40 tag 29 ncq 688128 out
                        res 40/00:3c:78:a9:88/00:00:0a:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
[28983.697667] ata1.00: status:   DRDY  
[28983.697668] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[28983.697672] ata1.00: cmd 61/40:f0:78:7f:88/05:00:0a:00:00/40 tag 30 ncq 688128 out
                        res 40/00:3c:78:a9:88/00:00:0a:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
[28983.697672] ata1.00: status:   DRDY  
[28983.697676] ata1: hard resetting link
[28984.017356] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[28984.022612] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[28984.022740] ata1: EH complete
[28991.611732] Suspending console(s) (use no_console_suspend to debug)
[28992.183822] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Synchronizing SCSI cache
[28992.186569] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Stopping disk
[28992.186604] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Synchronizing SCSI cache
[28992.189594] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Stopping disk
[28992.967426] PM: suspend of devices complete after 1351.349 msecs
[28992.999461] PM: late suspend of devices complete after 31.990 msecs
[28993.000058] ehci-pci 0000:00:1d.0: System wakeup enabled by ACPI
[28993.000306] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: System wakeup enabled by ACPI
[28993.016463] PM: noirq suspend of devices complete after 16.978 msecs
[28993.017024] ACPI: Preparing to enter system sleep state S3
[28993.017349] PM: Saving platform NVS memory
[28993.017357] Disabling non-boot CPUs ...
[28993.017389] intel_pstate CPU 1 exiting
[28993.018727] kvm: disabling virtualization on CPU1
[28993.019320] smpboot: CPU 1 is now offline
[28993.019646] intel_pstate CPU 2 exiting

In the interim, to overcome this problem, we can force the device to run in degraded mode. I'm not sure if it is really the degraded mode, or the device was falsely advertised as a 6 GiB capable device. Time will tell, but for now, force it to run in 3 GiB mode, and so far, I haven't run into the above mentioned probems. To force 3 GiB speed, apply the following. 

rrs@learner:~$ cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-4.0.4+ root=/dev/mapper/sdb_crypt ro cgroup_enable=memory swapaccount=1 rootflags=data=writeback libata.force=1:3 quiet
16:42

And then verify it... As you can see below, I've forced it for ata1 because I want my SSD drive to run at full-speed. I've done enough I/O, which earlier resulted in the kernel spitting the SATA errors. With this workaround, the kernel does not spit any error messages. 

[    1.273365] libata version 3.00 loaded.
[    1.287290] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0300 32 slots 4 ports 6 Gbps 0x3 impl SATA mode
[    1.288238] ata1: FORCE: PHY spd limit set to 3.0Gbps
[    1.288240] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xb051b000 port 0xb051b100 irq 41
[    1.288242] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xb051b000 port 0xb051b180 irq 41
[    1.288244] ata3: DUMMY
[    1.288245] ata4: DUMMY
[    1.606971] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320)
[    1.607906] ata1.00: ATA-9: WDC WD5000M22K-24Z1LT0-SSHD-16GB, 02.01A03, max UDMA/133
[    1.607910] ata1.00: 976773168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA
[    1.608856] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[    1.609106] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      WDC WD5000M22K-2 1A03 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[    1.927167] ata2: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[    1.928980] ata2.00: ATA-8: KINGSTON SM2280S3120G, S8FM06.A, max UDMA/133
[    1.928983] ata2.00: 234441648 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA
[    1.929616] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133

And the throughput you get out of your WD SATA SSHD drive, with capability set to 3.0 GiB is: 

rrs@learner:/media/SSHD/tmp$ while true; do dd if=/dev/zero of=foo.img bs=1M count=20000; sync; rm -rf foo.img; sync; done
20000+0 records in
20000+0 records out
20971520000 bytes (21 GB) copied, 202.014 s, 104 MB/s
20000+0 records in
20000+0 records out
20971520000 bytes (21 GB) copied, 206.111 s, 102 MB/s

Hannes Reinecke has submitted patches for NCQ enhancements, for Linux 4.1, which I hope will resolve these problems. Another option is to disable NCQ for the drive, or else blacklist the make/model in driver/ata/libata-core.c

By the time I finished this blog entry draft, I had tests to conclude that this did not look like an NCQ problem. Because in degraded mode too, it runs with NCQ enabled (check above). 

rrs@learner:~$ sudo fstrim -vv /media/SSHD
/media/SSHD: 268.2 GiB (287930949632 bytes) trimmed
16:58          
rrs@learner:~$ sudo fstrim -vv /
[sudo] password for rrs:
/: 64 GiB (68650749952 bytes) trimmed
16:56

Another interesting feature of this drive is support for TRIM / DISCARD. This drive's FTL accepts the TRIM command. Ofcourse, you need to ensure that you have discard enabled in all the layers. In my case, SATA + Device Mapper (Crypt and LVM) + File System (ext4) Display

The overall display of this device is amazing. It is large enough to give you vibrant look. At 1920x1080 resolution, things look good. The display support was available out-of-the-box.

There were some suspend / resume hangs that occured with kernels < 4.x, during suspend / resume. The issue was root caused and fixed for Linux 4.0.

You may still notice the following kernel messages, though not problematic to me so far. 

[28977.518114] PM: thaw of devices complete after 3607.979 msecs
[28977.590389] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[28977.590582] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[28977.591095] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[28977.591185] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[28977.591368] acpi device:30: Cannot transition to power state D3cold for parent in (unknown)
[28977.591911] pci_bus 0000:01: Allocating resources
[28977.591933] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[28977.592093] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[28977.592401] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment

You may need to disable the Intel Management Engine Interface (mei.ko), incase you run into suspend/resume problems. 

rrs@learner:/media/SSHD/tmp$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/intel-mei-blacklist.conf
blacklist mei
blacklist mei-me
17:01

You may also run into the following Kernel Oops during suspend/resume. Below, you see 2 interation of sleep because it first hibernates and then sleeps (s2both). 

[  180.470206] Syncing filesystems ... done.
[  180.473337] Freezing user space processes ... (elapsed 0.001 seconds) done.
[  180.475210] PM: Marking nosave pages: [mem 0x00000000-0x00000fff]
[  180.475213] PM: Marking nosave pages: [mem 0x0006f000-0x0006ffff]
[  180.475215] PM: Marking nosave pages: [mem 0x00088000-0x000fffff]
[  180.475220] PM: Marking nosave pages: [mem 0x97360000-0x97b5ffff]
[  180.475274] PM: Marking nosave pages: [mem 0x9c36f000-0x9cffefff]
[  180.475356] PM: Marking nosave pages: [mem 0x9d000000-0xffffffff]
[  180.476877] PM: Basic memory bitmaps created
[  180.477003] PM: Preallocating image memory... done (allocated 380227 pages)
[  180.851800] PM: Allocated 1520908 kbytes in 0.37 seconds (4110.56 MB/s)
[  180.851802] Freezing remaining freezable tasks ... (elapsed 0.001 seconds) done.
[  180.853355] Suspending console(s) (use no_console_suspend to debug)
[  180.853520] wlan0: deauthenticating from c4:6e:1f:d0:67:26 by local choice (Reason: 3=DEAUTH_LEAVING)
[  180.864159] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
[  181.172222] PM: freeze of devices complete after 319.294 msecs
[  181.196080] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[  181.196124] WARNING: CPU: 3 PID: 3707 at drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c:7904 hsw_enable_pc8+0x659/0x7c0 [i915]()
[  181.196125] SPLL enabled
[  181.196159] Modules linked in: rfcomm ctr ccm bnep pci_stub vboxpci(O) vboxnetadp(O) vboxnetflt(O) vboxdrv(O) bridge stp llc xt_conntrack iptable_filter ipt_MASQUERADE nf_nat_masquerade_ipv4 iptable_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 nf_nat_ipv4 nf_nat nf_conntrack xt_CHECKSUM xt_tcpudp iptable_mangle ip_tables x_tables nls_utf8 nls_cp437 vfat fat rtsx_usb_ms memstick snd_hda_codec_hdmi joydev mousedev hid_sensor_rotation hid_sensor_incl_3d hid_sensor_als hid_sensor_accel_3d hid_sensor_magn_3d hid_sensor_gyro_3d hid_sensor_trigger industrialio_triggered_buffer kfifo_buf industrialio hid_sensor_iio_common iTCO_wdt iTCO_vendor_support hid_multitouch x86_pkg_temp_thermal intel_powerclamp coretemp intel_rapl iosf_mbi kvm_intel kvm btusb hid_sensor_hub bluetooth uvcvideo videobuf2_vmalloc videobuf2_memops
[  181.196203]  videobuf2_core v4l2_common videodev media pcspkr evdev mac_hid arc4 psmouse serio_raw efivars i2c_i801 rtl8723be btcoexist rtl8723_common rtl_pci rtlwifi mac80211 snd_soc_rt5640 cfg80211 snd_soc_rl6231 snd_hda_codec_realtek i915 snd_soc_core snd_hda_codec_generic ideapad_laptop ac snd_compress dw_dmac sparse_keymap drm_kms_helper rfkill battery dw_dmac_core snd_hda_intel snd_pcm_dmaengine snd_soc_sst_acpi snd_hda_controller video 8250_dw regmap_i2c snd_hda_codec drm snd_hwdep snd_pcm spi_pxa2xx_platform i2c_designware_platform soc_button_array snd_timer i2c_designware_core snd i2c_algo_bit soundcore shpchp lpc_ich button processor fuse ipv6 autofs4 ext4 crc16 jbd2 mbcache btrfs xor raid6_pq algif_skcipher af_alg dm_crypt dm_mod sg usbhid sd_mod rtsx_usb_sdmmc rtsx_usb crct10dif_pclmul
[  181.196220]  crc32_pclmul crc32c_intel ghash_clmulni_intel aesni_intel aes_x86_64 lrw gf128mul glue_helper ablk_helper cryptd ahci libahci libata xhci_pci ehci_pci xhci_hcd ehci_hcd scsi_mod usbcore usb_common thermal fan thermal_sys hwmon i2c_hid hid i2c_core sdhci_acpi sdhci mmc_core gpio_lynxpoint
[  181.196224] CPU: 3 PID: 3707 Comm: kworker/u16:7 Tainted: G           O    4.0.4+ #14
[  181.196225] Hardware name: LENOVO 20344/INVALID, BIOS 96CN29WW(V1.15) 10/16/2014
[  181.196230] Workqueue: events_unbound async_run_entry_fn
[  181.196233]  0000000000000000 ffffffffa0706f68 ffffffff81522198 ffff880064debc88
[  181.196235]  ffffffff8106c5b1 ffff880251460000 ffff880250f83b68 ffff880250f83b78
[  181.196237]  ffff880250f83800 0000000000000001 ffffffff8106c62a ffffffffa071407c
[  181.196238] Call Trace:
[  181.196248]  [<ffffffff81522198>] ? dump_stack+0x40/0x50
[  181.196251]  [<ffffffff8106c5b1>] ? warn_slowpath_common+0x81/0xb0
[  181.196254]  [<ffffffff8106c62a>] ? warn_slowpath_fmt+0x4a/0x50
[  181.196278]  [<ffffffffa06ae349>] ? hsw_enable_pc8+0x659/0x7c0 [i915]
[  181.196289]  [<ffffffffa0643ee0>] ? intel_suspend_complete+0xe0/0x6e0 [i915]
[  181.196300]  [<ffffffffa0644501>] ? i915_drm_suspend_late+0x21/0x90 [i915]
[  181.196311]  [<ffffffffa0644690>] ? i915_pm_poweroff_late+0x40/0x40 [i915]
[  181.196318]  [<ffffffff813fa7ba>] ? dpm_run_callback+0x4a/0x100
[  181.196321]  [<ffffffff813fb010>] ? __device_suspend_late+0xa0/0x180
[  181.196324]  [<ffffffff813fb10e>] ? async_suspend_late+0x1e/0xa0
[  181.196326]  [<ffffffff8108b973>] ? async_run_entry_fn+0x43/0x160
[  181.196330]  [<ffffffff81083a5d>] ? process_one_work+0x14d/0x3f0
[  181.196332]  [<ffffffff81084463>] ? worker_thread+0x53/0x480
[  181.196334]  [<ffffffff81084410>] ? rescuer_thread+0x300/0x300
[  181.196338]  [<ffffffff81089191>] ? kthread+0xc1/0xe0
[  181.196341]  [<ffffffff810890d0>] ? kthread_create_on_node+0x180/0x180
[  181.196346]  [<ffffffff81527898>] ? ret_from_fork+0x58/0x90
[  181.196349]  [<ffffffff810890d0>] ? kthread_create_on_node+0x180/0x180
[  181.196350] ---[ end trace 8e339004db298838 ]---
[  181.220094] PM: late freeze of devices complete after 47.936 msecs
[  181.220972] PM: noirq freeze of devices complete after 0.875 msecs
[  181.221577] ACPI: Preparing to enter system sleep state S4
[  181.221886] PM: Saving platform NVS memory
[  181.222702] Disabling non-boot CPUs ...
[  181.222731] intel_pstate CPU 1 exiting
[  181.224041] kvm: disabling virtualization on CPU1
[  181.224680] smpboot: CPU 1 is now offline
[  181.225121] intel_pstate CPU 2 exiting
[  181.226407] kvm: disabling virtualization on CPU2
[  181.227025] smpboot: CPU 2 is now offline
[  181.227441] intel_pstate CPU 3 exiting
[  181.227728] Broke affinity for irq 19
[  181.227747] Broke affinity for irq 41
[  181.228771] kvm: disabling virtualization on CPU3
[  181.228793] smpboot: CPU 3 is now offline
[  181.229624] PM: Creating hibernation image:
[  181.563651] PM: Need to copy 379053 pages
[  181.563655] PM: Normal pages needed: 379053 + 1024, available pages: 1697704
[  182.472910] PM: Hibernation image created (379053 pages copied)
[  181.232347] PM: Restoring platform NVS memory
[  181.233171] Enabling non-boot CPUs ...
[  181.233246] x86: Booting SMP configuration:
[  181.233248] smpboot: Booting Node 0 Processor 1 APIC 0x1
[  181.246771] kvm: enabling virtualization on CPU1
[  181.249339] CPU1 is up
[  181.249389] smpboot: Booting Node 0 Processor 2 APIC 0x2
[  181.262313] kvm: enabling virtualization on CPU2
[  181.264853] CPU2 is up
[  181.264903] smpboot: Booting Node 0 Processor 3 APIC 0x3
[  181.277831] kvm: enabling virtualization on CPU3
[  181.280317] CPU3 is up
[  181.288471] ACPI: Waking up from system sleep state S4
[  182.340655] PM: noirq thaw of devices complete after 0.637 msecs
[  182.378087] PM: early thaw of devices complete after 37.428 msecs
[  182.378436] rtlwifi: rtlwifi: wireless switch is on
[  182.451021] rtc_cmos 00:01: System wakeup disabled by ACPI
[  182.697575] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320)
[  182.697617] ata2: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[  182.699248] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[  182.699911] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133
[  182.699917] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: port does not support device sleep
[  186.059539] PM: thaw of devices complete after 3685.338 msecs
[  186.134292] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  186.134479] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  186.134992] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  186.135080] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  186.135266] acpi device:30: Cannot transition to power state D3cold for parent in (unknown)
[  186.135950] pci_bus 0000:01: Allocating resources
[  186.135974] pcieport 0000:00:1c.0: bridge window [mem 0x00100000-0x000fffff 64bit pref] to [bus 01] add_size 200000
[  186.135980] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  186.136049] pcieport 0000:00:1c.0: res[15]=[mem 0x00100000-0x000fffff 64bit pref] get_res_add_size add_size 200000
[  186.136072] pcieport 0000:00:1c.0: BAR 15: assigned [mem 0x9fb00000-0x9fcfffff 64bit pref]
[  186.136174] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  186.136490] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  199.454497] Suspending console(s) (use no_console_suspend to debug)
[  200.024190] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Synchronizing SCSI cache
[  200.024356] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Synchronizing SCSI cache
[  200.025359] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Stopping disk
[  200.028701] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Stopping disk
[  201.106085] PM: suspend of devices complete after 1651.336 msecs
[  201.106591] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[  201.106628] WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 3725 at drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c:7904 hsw_enable_pc8+0x659/0x7c0 [i915]()
[  201.106628] SPLL enabled
[  201.106656] Modules linked in: rfcomm ctr ccm bnep pci_stub vboxpci(O) vboxnetadp(O) vboxnetflt(O) vboxdrv(O) bridge stp llc xt_conntrack iptable_filter ipt_MASQUERADE nf_nat_masquerade_ipv4 iptable_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 nf_nat_ipv4 nf_nat nf_conntrack xt_CHECKSUM xt_tcpudp iptable_mangle ip_tables x_tables nls_utf8 nls_cp437 vfat fat rtsx_usb_ms memstick snd_hda_codec_hdmi joydev mousedev hid_sensor_rotation hid_sensor_incl_3d hid_sensor_als hid_sensor_accel_3d hid_sensor_magn_3d hid_sensor_gyro_3d hid_sensor_trigger industrialio_triggered_buffer kfifo_buf industrialio hid_sensor_iio_common iTCO_wdt iTCO_vendor_support hid_multitouch x86_pkg_temp_thermal intel_powerclamp coretemp intel_rapl iosf_mbi kvm_intel kvm btusb hid_sensor_hub bluetooth uvcvideo videobuf2_vmalloc videobuf2_memops
[  201.106694]  videobuf2_core v4l2_common videodev media pcspkr evdev mac_hid arc4 psmouse serio_raw efivars i2c_i801 rtl8723be btcoexist rtl8723_common rtl_pci rtlwifi mac80211 snd_soc_rt5640 cfg80211 snd_soc_rl6231 snd_hda_codec_realtek i915 snd_soc_core snd_hda_codec_generic ideapad_laptop ac snd_compress dw_dmac sparse_keymap drm_kms_helper rfkill battery dw_dmac_core snd_hda_intel snd_pcm_dmaengine snd_soc_sst_acpi snd_hda_controller video 8250_dw regmap_i2c snd_hda_codec drm snd_hwdep snd_pcm spi_pxa2xx_platform i2c_designware_platform soc_button_array snd_timer i2c_designware_core snd i2c_algo_bit soundcore shpchp lpc_ich button processor fuse ipv6 autofs4 ext4 crc16 jbd2 mbcache btrfs xor raid6_pq algif_skcipher af_alg dm_crypt dm_mod sg usbhid sd_mod rtsx_usb_sdmmc rtsx_usb crct10dif_pclmul
[  201.106711]  crc32_pclmul crc32c_intel ghash_clmulni_intel aesni_intel aes_x86_64 lrw gf128mul glue_helper ablk_helper cryptd ahci libahci libata xhci_pci ehci_pci xhci_hcd ehci_hcd scsi_mod usbcore usb_common thermal fan thermal_sys hwmon i2c_hid hid i2c_core sdhci_acpi sdhci mmc_core gpio_lynxpoint
[  201.106714] CPU: 0 PID: 3725 Comm: kworker/u16:25 Tainted: G        W  O    4.0.4+ #14
[  201.106715] Hardware name: LENOVO 20344/INVALID, BIOS 96CN29WW(V1.15) 10/16/2014
[  201.106720] Workqueue: events_unbound async_run_entry_fn
[  201.106723]  0000000000000000 ffffffffa0706f68 ffffffff81522198 ffff880064dd7c88
[  201.106725]  ffffffff8106c5b1 ffff880251460000 ffff880250f83b68 ffff880250f83b78
[  201.106727]  ffff880250f83800 0000000000000002 ffffffff8106c62a ffffffffa071407c
[  201.106728] Call Trace:
[  201.106737]  [<ffffffff81522198>] ? dump_stack+0x40/0x50
[  201.106740]  [<ffffffff8106c5b1>] ? warn_slowpath_common+0x81/0xb0
[  201.106742]  [<ffffffff8106c62a>] ? warn_slowpath_fmt+0x4a/0x50
[  201.106765]  [<ffffffffa06ae349>] ? hsw_enable_pc8+0x659/0x7c0 [i915]
[  201.106776]  [<ffffffffa0643ee0>] ? intel_suspend_complete+0xe0/0x6e0 [i915]
[  201.106786]  [<ffffffffa0644501>] ? i915_drm_suspend_late+0x21/0x90 [i915]
[  201.106797]  [<ffffffffa0644690>] ? i915_pm_poweroff_late+0x40/0x40 [i915]
[  201.106802]  [<ffffffff813fa7ba>] ? dpm_run_callback+0x4a/0x100
[  201.106805]  [<ffffffff813fb010>] ? __device_suspend_late+0xa0/0x180
[  201.106809]  [<ffffffff813fb10e>] ? async_suspend_late+0x1e/0xa0
[  201.106811]  [<ffffffff8108b973>] ? async_run_entry_fn+0x43/0x160
[  201.106813]  [<ffffffff81083a5d>] ? process_one_work+0x14d/0x3f0
[  201.106815]  [<ffffffff81084463>] ? worker_thread+0x53/0x480
[  201.106818]  [<ffffffff81084410>] ? rescuer_thread+0x300/0x300
[  201.106821]  [<ffffffff81089191>] ? kthread+0xc1/0xe0
[  201.106824]  [<ffffffff810890d0>] ? kthread_create_on_node+0x180/0x180
[  201.106827]  [<ffffffff81527898>] ? ret_from_fork+0x58/0x90
[  201.106830]  [<ffffffff810890d0>] ? kthread_create_on_node+0x180/0x180
[  201.106832] ---[ end trace 8e339004db298839 ]---
[  201.130052] PM: late suspend of devices complete after 23.960 msecs
[  201.130725] ehci-pci 0000:00:1d.0: System wakeup enabled by ACPI
[  201.130885] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: System wakeup enabled by ACPI
[  201.146986] PM: noirq suspend of devices complete after 16.930 msecs
[  201.147591] ACPI: Preparing to enter system sleep state S3
[  201.147942] PM: Saving platform NVS memory
[  201.147948] Disabling non-boot CPUs ...
[  201.147999] intel_pstate CPU 1 exiting
[  201.149324] kvm: disabling virtualization on CPU1
[  201.149337] smpboot: CPU 1 is now offline
[  201.149640] intel_pstate CPU 2 exiting
[  201.151096] kvm: disabling virtualization on CPU2
[  201.151108] smpboot: CPU 2 is now offline
[  201.152017] intel_pstate CPU 3 exiting
[  201.153250] kvm: disabling virtualization on CPU3
[  201.153256] smpboot: CPU 3 is now offline
[  201.156229] ACPI: Low-level resume complete
[  201.156307] PM: Restoring platform NVS memory
[  201.160033] CPU0 microcode updated early to revision 0x1c, date = 2014-07-03
[  201.160190] Enabling non-boot CPUs ...
[  201.160241] x86: Booting SMP configuration:
[  201.160243] smpboot: Booting Node 0 Processor 1 APIC 0x1
[  201.172665] kvm: enabling virtualization on CPU1
[  201.174982] CPU1 is up
[  201.175013] smpboot: Booting Node 0 Processor 2 APIC 0x2
[  201.187569] CPU2 microcode updated early to revision 0x1c, date = 2014-07-03
[  201.188796] kvm: enabling virtualization on CPU2
[  201.191130] CPU2 is up
[  201.191158] smpboot: Booting Node 0 Processor 3 APIC 0x3
[  201.203297] kvm: enabling virtualization on CPU3
[  201.205679] CPU3 is up
[  201.210414] ACPI: Waking up from system sleep state S3
[  201.224617] ehci-pci 0000:00:1d.0: System wakeup disabled by ACPI
[  201.332523] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: System wakeup disabled by ACPI
[  201.332634] PM: noirq resume of devices complete after 121.623 msecs
[  201.372718] PM: early resume of devices complete after 40.058 msecs
[  201.372892] rtlwifi: rtlwifi: wireless switch is on
[  201.373270] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Starting disk
[  201.373271] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Starting disk
[  201.445954] rtc_cmos 00:01: System wakeup disabled by ACPI
[  201.692510] ata2: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[  201.694719] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133
[  201.694724] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: port does not support device sleep
[  201.836724] usb 2-4: reset high-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[  201.890158] psmouse serio1: synaptics: queried max coordinates: x [..5702], y [..4730]
[  201.930768] psmouse serio1: synaptics: queried min coordinates: x [1242..], y [1124..]
[  202.076784] usb 2-5: reset full-speed USB device number 3 using xhci_hcd
[  202.205100] usb 2-5: ep 0x2 - rounding interval to 64 microframes, ep desc says 80 microframes
[  202.316799] usb 2-7: reset full-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd
[  202.444945] usb 2-7: No LPM exit latency info found, disabling LPM.
[  202.556817] usb 2-8: reset full-speed USB device number 6 using xhci_hcd
[  202.908691] usb 2-6: reset high-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
[  203.932602] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320)
[  204.044890] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[  206.228698] PM: resume of devices complete after 4855.892 msecs
[  206.380738] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  206.383152] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  206.385775] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  206.388066] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  206.390415] acpi device:30: Cannot transition to power state D3cold for parent in (unknown)
[  206.393078] pci_bus 0000:01: Allocating resources
[  206.393098] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  206.395470] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  206.397927] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[  206.518516] Restarting kernel threads ... done.
[  206.518812] PM: Basic memory bitmaps freed
[  206.518816] Restarting tasks ... done.

There is one more occasional Kernel Oops (below), which I believe again has to do with Intel. 

[ 8770.745396] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[ 8770.745441] WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 7206 at drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c:9756 intel_check_page_flip+0xd2/0xe0 [i915]()
[ 8770.745444] Kicking stuck page flip: queued at 466186, now 466191
[ 8770.745445] Modules linked in: cpuid rfcomm ctr ccm bnep pci_stub vboxpci(O) vboxnetadp(O) vboxnetflt(O) vboxdrv(O) bridge stp llc xt_conntrack iptable_filter ipt_MASQUERADE nf_nat_masquerade_ipv4 iptable_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 nf_nat_ipv4 nf_nat nf_conntrack xt_CHECKSUM xt_tcpudp iptable_mangle ip_tables x_tables nls_utf8 nls_cp437 vfat fat rtsx_usb_ms memstick snd_hda_codec_hdmi joydev mousedev hid_sensor_rotation hid_sensor_incl_3d hid_sensor_als hid_sensor_accel_3d hid_sensor_magn_3d hid_sensor_gyro_3d hid_sensor_trigger industrialio_triggered_buffer kfifo_buf industrialio hid_sensor_iio_common iTCO_wdt iTCO_vendor_support hid_multitouch x86_pkg_temp_thermal intel_powerclamp coretemp intel_rapl iosf_mbi kvm_intel kvm btusb hid_sensor_hub bluetooth uvcvideo videobuf2_vmalloc videobuf2_memops
[ 8770.745484]  videobuf2_core v4l2_common videodev media pcspkr evdev mac_hid arc4 psmouse serio_raw efivars i2c_i801 rtl8723be btcoexist rtl8723_common rtl_pci rtlwifi mac80211 snd_soc_rt5640 cfg80211 snd_soc_rl6231 snd_hda_codec_realtek i915 snd_soc_core snd_hda_codec_generic ideapad_laptop ac snd_compress dw_dmac sparse_keymap drm_kms_helper rfkill battery dw_dmac_core snd_hda_intel snd_pcm_dmaengine snd_soc_sst_acpi snd_hda_controller video 8250_dw regmap_i2c snd_hda_codec drm snd_hwdep snd_pcm spi_pxa2xx_platform i2c_designware_platform soc_button_array snd_timer i2c_designware_core snd i2c_algo_bit soundcore shpchp lpc_ich button processor fuse ipv6 autofs4 ext4 crc16 jbd2 mbcache btrfs xor raid6_pq algif_skcipher af_alg dm_crypt dm_mod sg usbhid sd_mod rtsx_usb_sdmmc rtsx_usb crct10dif_pclmul
[ 8770.745536]  crc32_pclmul crc32c_intel ghash_clmulni_intel aesni_intel aes_x86_64 lrw gf128mul glue_helper ablk_helper cryptd ahci libahci libata xhci_pci ehci_pci xhci_hcd ehci_hcd scsi_mod usbcore usb_common thermal fan thermal_sys hwmon i2c_hid hid i2c_core sdhci_acpi sdhci mmc_core gpio_lynxpoint
[ 8770.745561] CPU: 0 PID: 7206 Comm: icedove Tainted: G        W  O    4.0.4+ #14
[ 8770.745563] Hardware name: LENOVO 20344/INVALID, BIOS 96CN29WW(V1.15) 10/16/2014
[ 8770.745565]  0000000000000000 ffffffffa0706f68 ffffffff81522198 ffff88025f203dc8
[ 8770.745569]  ffffffff8106c5b1 ffff880250f83800 ffff880254dcc000 0000000000000000
[ 8770.745572]  0000000000000000 0000000000000000 ffffffff8106c62a ffffffffa0709d50
[ 8770.745575] Call Trace:
[ 8770.745577]  <IRQ>  [<ffffffff81522198>] ? dump_stack+0x40/0x50
[ 8770.745592]  [<ffffffff8106c5b1>] ? warn_slowpath_common+0x81/0xb0
[ 8770.745595]  [<ffffffff8106c62a>] ? warn_slowpath_fmt+0x4a/0x50
[ 8770.745616]  [<ffffffffa06a0bb3>] ? __intel_pageflip_stall_check+0x113/0x120 [i915]
[ 8770.745634]  [<ffffffffa06af042>] ? intel_check_page_flip+0xd2/0xe0 [i915]
[ 8770.745652]  [<ffffffffa067cde1>] ? ironlake_irq_handler+0x2e1/0x1010 [i915]
[ 8770.745657]  [<ffffffff81092d1a>] ? check_preempt_curr+0x5a/0xa0
[ 8770.745663]  [<ffffffff812d66c2>] ? timerqueue_del+0x22/0x70
[ 8770.745668]  [<ffffffff810bb7d5>] ? handle_irq_event_percpu+0x75/0x190
[ 8770.745672]  [<ffffffff8101b945>] ? read_tsc+0x5/0x10
[ 8770.745676]  [<ffffffff810bb928>] ? handle_irq_event+0x38/0x50
[ 8770.745680]  [<ffffffff810be841>] ? handle_edge_irq+0x71/0x120
[ 8770.745685]  [<ffffffff810153bd>] ? handle_irq+0x1d/0x30
[ 8770.745689]  [<ffffffff8152a866>] ? do_IRQ+0x46/0xe0
[ 8770.745694]  [<ffffffff8152866d>] ? common_interrupt+0x6d/0x6d
[ 8770.745695]  <EOI>  [<ffffffff8152794d>] ? system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b
[ 8770.745701] ---[ end trace 8e339004db29883a ]---
Network

In my case, the laptop came with the Realtek Wireless device (details above in lspci output). Note: The machine has no wired interface.

While the Intel Wifi devices shipped with this laptop have their own share of problems, this device (rtl8723be) works out of the box. But only for a while. There is no certain pattern on what triggers the bug, but once triggered, the network just freezes. Nothing is logged.

If your Yoga 2 13 came with the RTL chip, the following workaround may help avoid the network issues. 

rrs@learner:/media/SSHD/tmp$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be.conf
options rtl8723be fwlps=0
17:06
MCE

Almost every boot, eventually, the kernel reports MCE errors. Not something I understand well, but so far, it hasn't caused any visible issues. And from what I have googled so far, nobody seems to have fixed it anywhere

So, with fingers crossed, lets just hope this never translates into a real problem.

What the kernel reports of the CPU's capabilities. 

[    0.041496] mce: CPU supports 7 MCE banks
[  299.540930] mce: [Hardware Error]: Machine check events logged

The MCE logs extracted from the buffer. 

mcelog: failed to prefill DIMM database from DMI data
Hardware event. This is not a software error.
MCE 0
CPU 0 BANK 5
MISC 38a0000086 ADDR fef81880
TIME 1432455005 Sun May 24 13:40:05 2015
MCG status:
MCi status:
Error overflow
Uncorrected error
MCi_MISC register valid
MCi_ADDR register valid
Processor context corrupt
MCA: corrected filtering (some unreported errors in same region)
Generic CACHE Level-2 Generic Error
STATUS ee0000000040110a MCGSTATUS 0
MCGCAP c07 APICID 0 SOCKETID 0
CPUID Vendor Intel Family 6 Model 69
Hardware event. This is not a software error.
MCE 1
CPU 0 BANK 6
MISC 78a0000086 ADDR fef81780
TIME 1432455005 Sun May 24 13:40:05 2015
MCG status:
MCi status:
Uncorrected error
MCi_MISC register valid
MCi_ADDR register valid
Processor context corrupt
MCA: corrected filtering (some unreported errors in same region)
Generic CACHE Level-2 Generic Error
STATUS ae0000000040110a MCGSTATUS 0
MCGCAP c07 APICID 0 SOCKETID 0
CPUID Vendor Intel Family 6 Model 69
Hardware event. This is not a software error.
MCE 2
CPU 0 BANK 5
MISC 38a0000086 ADDR fef81880
TIME 1432455114 Sun May 24 13:41:54 2015
MCG status:
MCi status:
Error overflow
Uncorrected error
MCi_MISC register valid
MCi_ADDR register valid
Processor context corrupt
MCA: corrected filtering (some unreported errors in same region)
Generic CACHE Level-2 Generic Error
STATUS ee0000000040110a MCGSTATUS 0
MCGCAP c07 APICID 0 SOCKETID 0
CPUID Vendor Intel Family 6 Model 69
Hardware event. This is not a software error.
MCE 3
CPU 0 BANK 6
MISC 78a0000086 ADDR fef81780
TIME 1432455114 Sun May 24 13:41:54 2015
MCG status:
MCi status:
Uncorrected error
MCi_MISC register valid
MCi_ADDR register valid
Processor context corrupt
MCA: corrected filtering (some unreported errors in same region)
Generic CACHE Level-2 Generic Error
STATUS ae0000000040110a MCGSTATUS 0
MCGCAP c07 APICID 0 SOCKETID 0
CPUID Vendor Intel Family 6 Model 69

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Steve McIntyre: Easier installation of Jessie on the Applied Micro X-Gene

As shipped, Debian Jessie (8.0) did not include kernel support for the USB controller on APM X-Gene based machines like the Mustang. In fact, at the time of writing this that support has not yet gone upstream into the mainline Linux kernel either but patches have been posted by Mark Langsdorf from Red Hat. This means that installing Debian is more awkward than it could be on these machines. They don't have optical drives fitted normally, so the neat isohybrid CD images that we have made in Debian so far won't work very well at all. Booting via UEFI from a USB stick will work, but then the installer won't be able to read from the USB stick at all and you're stuck. :-( The best way so far for installing Debian is to do a network installation using tftp etc. Well, until now... :-) I've patched the Debian Jessie kernel, then re-built the installer and a netinst image to use them. I've put a copy of that image up at http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/arm64-mustang/ with more instructions on how to use it. I'm just submitting the patch for inclusion into the Jessie stable kernel, hopefully ready to go into the 8.1 point release.

18 May 2015

Jonathan McDowell: Stepping down from SPI

I was first elected to the Software in the Public Interest board back in 2009. I was re-elected in 2012. This July I am up for re-election again. For a variety of reasons I ve decided not to stand; mostly a combination of the fact that I think 2 terms (6 years) is enough in a single stretch and an inability to devote as much time to the organization as I d like. I mentioned this at the May board meeting. I m planning to stay involved where I can. My main reason for posting this here is to cause people to think about whether they might want to stand for the board. Nominations open on July 1st and run until July 13th. The main thing you need to absolutely commit to is being able to attend the monthly board meeting, which is held on IRC at 20:30 UTC on the second Thursday of the month. They tend to last at most 30 minutes. Of course there s a variety of tasks that happen in the background, such as answering queries from prospective associated projects or discussing ongoing matters on the membership or board lists depending on circumstances. It s my firm belief that SPI do some very important work for the Free software community. Few people realise the wide variety of associated projects. SPI offload the boring admin bits around accepting donations and managing project assets (be those machines, domains, trademarks or whatever), leaving those projects able to concentrate on the actual technical side of things. Most project members don t realise the involvement of SPI, and that s largely a good thing as it indicates the system is working. However it also means that there can sometimes be a lack of people wanting to stand at election time, and an absence of diversity amongst the candidates. I m happy to answer questions of anyone who might consider standing for the board; #spi on irc.oftc.net is a good place to ask them - I am there as Noodles.

Daniel Pocock: Free and open WebRTC for the Fedora Community

In January 2014, we launched the rtc.debian.org service for the Debian community. An equivalent service has been in testing for the Fedora community at FedRTC.org. Some key points about the Fedora service:
  • The web front-end is just HTML, CSS and JavaScript. PHP is only used for account creation, the actual WebRTC experience requires no server-side web framework, just a SIP proxy.
  • The web code is all available in a Github repository so people can extend it.
  • Anybody who can authenticate against the FedOAuth OpenID is able to get a fedrtc.org test account immediately.
  • The server is built entirely with packages from CentOS 7 + EPEL 7, except for the SIP proxy itself. The SIP proxy is reSIProcate, which is available as a Fedora package and builds easily on RHEL / CentOS.
Testing it with WebRTC Create an RTC password and then log in. Other users can call you. It is federated, so people can also call from rtc.debian.org or from freephonebox.net. Testing it with other SIP softphones You can use the RTC password to connect to the SIP proxy from many softphones, including Jitsi or Lumicall on Android. Copy it The process to replicate the server for another domain is entirely described in the Real-Time Communications Quick Start Guide. Discuss it The FreeRTC mailing list is a great place to discuss any issues involving this site or free RTC in general. WebRTC opportunities expanding Just this week, the first batch of Firefox OS televisions are hitting the market. Every one of these is a potential WebRTC client that can interact with free communications platforms.

Rapha&#235;l Hertzog: Freexian s report about Debian Long Term Support, April 2015

A Debian LTS logoLike each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In April, 81.75 work hours have been dispatched among 5 paid contributors (20.75 hours where unused hours of Ben and Holger that were re-dispatched to other contributors). Their reports are available: Evolution of the situation May has seen a small increase in terms of sponsored hours (66.25 hours per month) and June is going to do even better with at least a new gold sponsor. We will have no problems sustaining the increased workload it implies since three Debian developers joined the team of contributors paid by Freexian (Antoine Beaupr , Santiago Ruano Rinc n, Scott Kitterman). The Jessie release probably shed some light on the Debian LTS project since we announced that Jessie will benefit from 5 years of support. Let s hope that the trend will continue in the following months and that we reach our first milestone of funding the equivalent of a half-time position. In terms of security updates waiting to be handled, the situation is a bit contrasted: the dla-needed.txt file lists 28 packages awaiting an update (12 less than last month), the list of open vulnerabilities in Squeeze shows about 60 affected packages in total (4 more than last month). The extra hours helped to make a good stride in the packages awaiting an update but there are many new vulnerabilities waiting to be triaged. Thanks to our sponsors The new sponsors of the month are in bold.

No comment Liked this article? Click here. My blog is Flattr-enabled.

Rapha&#235;l Hertzog: Freexian s report about Debian Long Term Support, April 2015

A Debian LTS logoLike each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In April, 81.75 work hours have been dispatched among 5 paid contributors (20.75 hours where unused hours of Ben and Holger that were re-dispatched to other contributors). Their reports are available: Evolution of the situation May has seen a small increase in terms of sponsored hours (66.25 hours per month) and June is going to do even better with at least a new gold sponsor. We will have no problems sustaining the increased workload it implies since three Debian developers joined the team of contributors paid by Freexian (Antoine Beaupr , Santiago Ruano Rinc n, Scott Kitterman). The Jessie release probably shed some light on the Debian LTS project since we announced that Jessie will benefit from 5 years of support. Let s hope that the trend will continue in the following months and that we reach our first milestone of funding the equivalent of a half-time position. In terms of security updates waiting to be handled, the situation is a bit contrasted: the dla-needed.txt file lists 28 packages awaiting an update (12 less than last month), the list of open vulnerabilities in Squeeze shows about 60 affected packages in total (4 more than last month). The extra hours helped to make a good stride in the packages awaiting an update but there are many new vulnerabilities waiting to be triaged. Thanks to our sponsors The new sponsors of the month are in bold.

No comment Liked this article? Click here. My blog is Flattr-enabled.

Dirk Eddelbuettel: random 0.2.4

A new release of our random package for truly (hardware-based) random numbers as provided by random.org is now on CRAN. The R 3.2.0 release brought the change to use an internal method="libcurl" which we are using if available; else the curl::curl() method added in release 0.2.3 is used. We are also a little more explicit about closing connections, and added really basic regression tests -- as it is hard to test hardware-based RNGs draws. Courtesy of CRANberries comes a diffstat report for this release. Current and previous releases are available here as well as on CRAN.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

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